Two weeks earlier than Tucker Carlson acquired canned, I frolicked with Abughazaleh and 5 of her Media Issues colleagues of their Navy Yard workplace overlooking the Anacostia River to observe them watch Fox Information’s night lineup. The house is huge, with open seating and enormous convention rooms — and only a few staff. (Many of the workforce has labored from dwelling because the pandemic started.)
Blonde, blue-eyed, and petite, Abughazaleh may simply go for considered one of Fox Information’s speaking heads. Certainly, Abughazaleh has a reasonably good thought of what it could take for her to change into a darling of the appropriate on one of many exhibits she displays every day. “Rant about cancel tradition on Twitter, make some ‘I stand with J.Okay. Rowling’ tweet, escalate it again and again,” she stated. “Complain, rinse, and repeat.
“It’s really easy and there’s a lot cash in it, which is why so many individuals do it,” she continued. “All you need to do is whine and be slightly racist. To be clear, I’d somewhat gouge out my eyeballs.”
Abughazaleh joked that she was born to be a “conservative sleeper agent.” She grew up in a “well-off” space of Dallas and attended personal colleges up till her sophomore 12 months of highschool. Her father is a Palestinian immigrant, and she or he’s a seventh-generation Texan on her mom’s facet. Their conservative family recurrently tuned into Fox Information.
As a baby, Abughazaleh additionally watched her maternal grandmother — a longtime member of the Texas Federation of Republican Ladies — work on a number of GOP campaigns and listened to her glowing descriptions of the occasion’s ideology. (Upon her grandmother’s loss of life, Abughazaleh inherited the mink coat that she wore to President Nixon’s inauguration.)
Abughazaleh was a Republican up till her teenagers. She credit her progressive political awakening to a transfer to Tucson, Arizona, throughout these years. “At the very least half my highschool was low-income or undocumented,” she says. “The bootstrap fable simply shattered earlier than my eyes.”
She attended George Washington College in Washington, DC, throughout Donald Trump’s years in workplace, majoring in worldwide safety along with finding out journalism. Upon graduating in 2020, she stated, “I wished to work for a corporation that aligned with mission, a mission that I believed in, and I didn’t wish to work someplace that may simply be a job — I wished to care about what I do.” The place at Media Issues was excellent for her.
Media Issues describes itself as a “progressive analysis and knowledge heart” devoted to “comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation within the US media.” The group’s web site archives footage from tv exhibits and on-line broadcasts alike, which it makes use of to trace false narratives or draw consideration to how sure points are being lined.
A part of Abughazaleh’s job is to drag TV clips of Fox Information moments from her assigned exhibits and ship the transcripts to her colleagues in order that they will hold observe of what’s being stated on a variety of matters on the cable information channel.
In contrast to a few of her colleagues, who make the most of a number of desktop displays, Abughazaleh does all of her work on a laptop computer. She flips from one tab to a different with lightning velocity, sending out emails, posting clips to Twitter, and firing off biting responses to folks in her mentions.
On the night I watched her at work, one of many first segments she grabbed was Carlson’s “wildly racist rant” about Tennessee state politician Justin Pearson. “You’re right here for a enjoyable night time,” she stated whereas exporting the clip from Carlson’s opening monologue. “Robust stuff — he’s having a traditional one right now.”
Media Issues staff are generally criticized for platforming problematic content material by posting clips from Fox Information. Abughazaleh sees it in a different way. “Fox is the most-watched cable information channel within the nation,” Abughazaleh stated. “They already had the platform. And simply letting them get by scot-free does extra harm than it helps.”